Veteran Brit TV Producer Richard Broke Dies

His credits include "Cold Comfort Farm", directed by John Schlesinger, and Colin Firth TV drama "Tumbledown".

LONDON – Veteran television and film producer Richard Broke, whose credits include Cold Comfort Farm, directed by John Schlesinger, has died after a short illness.

He was 70.

Cold Comfort Farm was made in 1995 by BBC and Thames Television and starred Eileen Atkins, Kate Beckinsale, StephenFry, IanMcKellen, JoannaLumley, MiriamMargolyes, FreddieJones and RufusSewell in a screenplay by MalcolmBradbury from the Stella Gibbons novel of the same name.

His credits also include Colin Firth Falklands' War drama Tumbledown, WinstonChurchill:The Wilderness Years and first world war drama The Monocled Mutineer, starring Paul McGann.

Broke was the first executive producer of Screen One for the BBC, with responsibility for around fifty dramas for the public broadcaster's strand.

He also made the award-winning A Question of Attribution, about the unmasking of Anthony Blunt as a spy with Schlesinger and wrote the screenplay and produced an adapatation of Graham Greene’s Doctor Fischer of Geneva, James Mason’s final movie, which also starred Alan Bates, Greta Scacchi and BarryHumphries.

He later produced the ITV series Where the Heart Is, followed by P.D. James’ The Murder Room for the BBC, Love Lies Bleeding for Granada, and Messiah starring Marc Warren, for the BBC.